RJMA
Registered User
- Feb 15, 2023
- 449
- 611
2 vezinas. Stanley Cup finalist. 396 wins (27 wins away from 10th all time). Winningest Russian goalie. Any chance?
The 400 wins/2 vezinas club is an unbelievably small fraternity (Brodeur, Roy, Belfour). He's 4 wins away.Goalies are tough. It'd be great if he didn't make it. He has a short-season Vezina and one more on top and then a little bit of meh...and then, of course, he was renowned for his playoff failures - on a historical level. He had a nice run last year and he somehow swept Tampa in 2019, but that's not enough to make his playoff resume remotely positive.
He has another opportunity on a team that plays defense to put together another run...
I don't know, as it sits right now, it's a pretty easy "no" for me...but folks are going to use the transitive property here and go, "Cheevers is in...Vernon is in...why not Bob?" and I suppose that isn't without its, ahem, charm...
2 vezinas. Stanley Cup finalist. 396 wins (27 wins away from 10th all time). Winningest Russian goalie. Any chance?
Maybe he surprises us all and becomes a key part of getting professional hockey's EveryGoal (i.e.: Cup) and leaves a positive impression, like a fighter who puts out a burst of energy in the last half-minute and "steals" a round-- but (at present moment) I'm not seeing it.I don't know, as it sits right now, it's a pretty easy "no" for me.
Should be top 3 in vezina voting (helle will win it)Maybe he surprises us all and becomes a key part of getting professional hockey's EveryGoal (i.e.: Cup) and leaves a positive impression, like a fighter who puts out a burst of energy in the last half-minute and "steals" a round-- but (at present moment) I'm not seeing it.
His two Vezinas are the only two times he was a Vezina top-5. Is he a Vezina top-5 this year? Perhaps?!? What's the value of a 2x Vezina starter whose credentials in other seasons are league-average starter (or a little less) in the other campaigns? And that's before we consider his playoff performance, which was measurably below average until last year. [Last year might elevate him to "playoff average" level.]
Nothing against him- and I'm not rooting against him- but he's not there now.
There's a bit of politics involved with Thomas, a lot of people don't like the way he feels about certain things, and then the justification of short career.Bob getting in while Thomas sits out would be good for exposing the fact that HOF level play isnt what they decide on.
Thomas peaked higher and like Bob had a few great seasons. The only difference is Thomas had a short career and Bob surrounded his few great seasons with a whole lot of bad seasons. But the bad seasons pushed him to the dumb compilation milestones they require of goalies.
FWIW, Thomas dominates Bob in GSAA and playoff GSAA with 131.1 for Thomas vs 88.1 for Bob, and 27.9 for Thomas vs -23.1 for Bob
That sounds nice, and in some ways it is...but I don't really care for raw career totals. He also has picked up an undue amount of wins compared to most goalies in history because he played in an era where a winner was awarded in every game. Almost everyone else in history had to deal with ties.The 400 wins/2 vezinas club is an unbelievably small fraternity (Brodeur, Roy, Belfour). He's 4 wins away.
This will see how voters will look at it, but no tie era big wins total will be quite common.He also has picked up an undue amount of wins compared to most goalies in history because he played in an era where a winner was awarded in every game.
I would propose to you to not look.If he doesn't get in I don't want to see guys like MAF in.
And even guys like Luongo...he was consistently good but never won a thing in the NHL.
Because he's had elite longevity and managed to stay a Number 1 Goaltender that has rated highly in the League in wins through many coaching changes. He has eight seasons where he was Top 10 in the League in wins, which has been by default because the League has been at 30-32 his whole career. Whether it was run and gun teams that left him out to dry or defensive teams where he could pick up a big save %, he's always been back there and done a good job of backstopping a team to good win totals.Jesus, how did he get to 14th in career wins already? I had no idea he was up there.
When goaltenders are "when he's bad he's really bad" they get demoted, very quickly. They are perhaps the position more than anyone else that is in constant competition, your backup can't outplay you and give the team a better chance to win, no matter your contract, what you did five years ago, etc. There's just too much chatter and pressure for changes. You are much better off being a mediocre 1st line forward and continuing to get ice time, or you get "demoted" to 2nd line and get more ice time, you continue to add to your stats and people say "he had some points, good for him."I mean, MAF was already getting some isolated HOF chatter when he got up around that number of career wins, and by then he had been 5th, 7th, 8th in vezina voting - Bobrovsky without the two 1sts.
I always had the perception that Bobrovsky kind of came out of nowhere to win his two Vezinas and went back to being an average-to-below-average goaltender in the other seasons. Kind of a "when he's bad he's really bad" record. Now that I look at each season in his career, I don't know that I can really back that up.
88 GSAA speaks to very good longevity and a couple elite peak seasons.2012, 2016 and 2020 were bad, 2023 wasn't good, and on the other side of the spectrum he has the Vezina years, then 2014, 2018 and 2023 were excellent. Aside from that, he's got 6 seasons that were more or less average where he just came to work and did his job. And you put that all in a masher and he's up at 88 GSAA for his career - which is not easy to do.
Yes, exactly, someone is saying Thomas sucks because he was only good with one coach when they were an elite defensive team, Bobrovsky is the opposite of that.And he did this playing for three different franchises, and significant time for six different coaches. He's had excellent, good, middling, and terrible teams in front of him. His career has run the gamut. We can't just dismiss his numbers as being a martyr goalie on a bad team, or a guy who's insulated by a strong system. Maybe there's some of each factor at different times, but no description defines his career.
Peak + Longevity should be Hall of Fame, but I think people get too caught up in things like "7-year prime, 10-year prime" etc. and fall in love with that.But I don't want to overstate the impressiveness of that GSAA number, either. It is just 12th among goalies whose careers began after the year 2000. After Lundqvist, Rask, Thomas, Rinne, Hellebuyck, Price, Vasi, Varlamov, Crawford, Bishop and Miller. That list reads like a who's who of the best post-lockout goalies in rough order, aside from a couple names one may think belong lower or higher. Probably the top seven on that list at least deserve careful consideration for the HHOF, while the other five generally do not. And Bobrovsky comes right after those five.
But Bobrovsky has those two Vezinas, which is twice as many as those other five have combined. And it's gonna be hard to keep out a guy with those two bullet point achievements. It would fly in the face of how they've handled all other inductions - aside from Thomas, of course, but with Thomas, it's defensible on the basis that his NHL career was half the length of all these other guys.
I would propose to you to not look.
Yeah.. sorry this comes across pretty far off from being fair representation.Thomas was not a good goalie that played behind a great defensive team in DPE 2.0. Thomas getting in should make people consider Roman Cechmanek...
As a reminder, with Julien: 151-78-31 (.640), 2.28 GAA, .926 save pct., 27 SO
Without Julien: 63-67-18 (.486), 2.96 GAA, .908 save pct., 4 SO (plus, ya know, not being NHL caliber for most of it, despite a number of attempts to break in)